REVIEW OF IN THE GALWAY SILENCE BY KEN BRUEN

In The Galway Silence is the first book in the Jack Taylor series–it’s a follow up to “The Emerald Trilogy” where the character was involved with a Gaelic femme fatale. We find the semi-functioning Irish “finder” picking up the pieces that Emerald left in her wake in a life that is different. As dark as those three books were, Bruen finds ways to take Jack and the reader further down into the abyss.

You know it is going to be dark when Jack tells you he has found a good point in his life. An inheritance has him flush and he is in a stable relationship. Saving a drowning man and being asked of two things puts him on his new road to Hell. An Irish version of the Trump brothers are drowned and their father wants to hire Jack to locate the killer. He refuses, but finds himself drawn into the case. His girlfriend asks him to look after her bratty son while she is in America for a couple weeks. These events and the return of a lover from the past tie Jack to a killer who calls himself Silence and makes him an opponent in a dark chess game.

Bruen uses the idea of silence as a dual theme. One is the quiet life that Jack struggles to attain, particularly after the chaos with Emerald. Jack follows current events as much as his case, connecting it to our own need for solace from the noise of a Brexit/Trump world. Silence also expresses the death that circles around Taylor as events close in. One great example is Bruen’s use of one small sentence after long rambling paragraph describing the day he spent with someone he gets to know and love. That sentence makes it clear there will never be another day they’ll have.

Bruen follows Taylor as someone attempting to retreat from the damage he’s been a part of. The only problem is, it keeps coming. He wonders if he is drawn to it, his penchant for self destruction only destroying others. He struggles to find a way to connect with anyone if fate always forces him to tap into the darkest part of himself.

In The Galway Silence is both Ken Bruen and The Jack Taylor series at it’s best. Bruen examines his hero and his city with a styles that cuts to the marrow of both. Jack Taylor may not always be a likable character, but we wouldn’t like him any other way.